How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

A lot of people, including sahms are looking to make money online in their spare time (as if they have any!)so look to affiliate marketing as an option. Affiliate marketing, also known as internet marketing is increasingly popular as a way to make money online.

Stay at home parents, work at home entrepreneurs, and people looking to up their income are looking at monetizing their computers with affiliate marketing. It can be done in your spare time and you can even fire your boss and do it full time if you are really good at it.

How does affiliate marketing work?

Companies pay people sales commission for facilitating a sale for them. That means that you don’t have to physically sell the product but you do have to get people to buy a product through your link. Companies that have affiliate programs will set up a system that allows you to use a specific link to get people to buy from you or there are other ways to capture data about the sale as well. You can work through affiliate programs for individual companies and through affiliate networks.

How do you get affiliate sales?

There are a multitude of options for getting people to buy through your link. You can simply capture the attention of people who are looking for something specific and get them to buy through you and you can also pre-sell someone on that something specific so you create sales for yourself. This can be done any number of ways such as:

pay per click advertising

writing product reviews

niche blogging

article marketing

e-mail marketing

and more

What sorts of products can be sold through affiliate programs?

You name it and you can probably be an affiliate for it. It’s a win-win for the company selling it because they capture more sales and only pay you if there’s an actual sale. You can sell physical retail products and you can sell dowloadable products, and you can sell services such as consulting, memberships, and more. Affiliate marketing opens many doors of possibility once you learn a bit about target audiences, keyword targeting, search engine optimization, social media, and other aspects of online marketing.

How do you get paid?

Affiliate programs work in different ways. Some programs pay you instantly per sale via PayPal. Some programs send you checks when you reach specified payment thresholds. You’ll want to read all the fine print in any program you consider joining and look at what others say about the profitability of that program. Results will vary but looking into the potential of various programs is smart before investing time and / or money in them.

How can you learn to be a successful internet marketer?

You can find many online sources of free entrepreneur information and you can take some shortcuts and get earning sooner if you buy information products that are guaranteed to teach you. (For example, a friend and mentor, Matthew Bredel recently launched a learning program called Tru-Guru that teaches you how to start your own online business and if you join you get a free copy of the book “No Money Marketing” that I co-wrote) There’s a lot to learn but this can be a huge potential opportunity for you to supplement your income, replace your income, or get debt free and save for something awesome.